Future Fuel Scenarios and Their Potential Impact to Aviation

In recent years fuel prices have been growing at a rapid pace. Current conservative projections predict that this is only a function of the natural volatility of oil prices, similar to the oil price spikes experienced in the 1970s. However, there is growing concern among analysts that the current price increases may not only be permanent, but that prices may continue to increase into the future before settling down at a much higher level than today. At high enough fuel prices, the aircraft industry would become very sensitive to fuel price. In this paper, the likelihood of fuel price increase is considered in three different price increase scenarios: "low," "medium," and "high." The impact of these scenarios on the aviation industry and alternatives are also addressed

Global Energy and Aviation Concerns

Renewable energy sources are usually diffuse and require large facilities. Biofuels work better, are more economical to produce for ground transportation, but sharply increase competition for food croplands. Noble laureate Richard Smalley (deceased-2005) conceptual 20 TWe power generation covers hundreds x hundreds of miles. Combined with Fuller s superconducting power grid system would enable renewable planetary energy. A solar-wind project in Australia will have a 7km diameter collector interfacing with a 1 km tower to extract 200 MW from wind turbines mounted at the base. GE Energy s 3.5MW Wind Turbine is large and placing this in perspective, it is as if one were rotating a Boeing 747-200; the blade diameter is that large. Wind turbines are rapidly gaining popularity in Europe and photovoltaic (PV) is expected to also expand rapidly. It becomes clear that we need (and still have time) to develop new sources of energy. Hf 178 bombarded by X-rays produces Gamma-rays for heating. The reaction stops when the X-rays stop; the half life is about 30 years and seems manageable vs 30 000 years. Water splitting needs to be perused as do ultra fast ultra intense laser applications in terms of fusion and new materials developments including new ways to strip and re-bind hydrogen into fuels. New methods and tools for development are being found in quantum mechanical applications to macro-systems and need to be developed into a set of new tool boxes for development of these new energy sources

Development of an advanced continuous mild gasification process for the production of coproducts. Task 4, System integration studies: Char upgrading

This document describes the results of Task 4 under which a 50 pound/hour char-to-carbon (CTC) process research unit (PRU) was designed in the second half of 1989, with construction completed in June 1990. The CTC PRU at Golden was operated for nearly one year during which 35 runs were completed for a total of nearly 800 hours of operation. Char methanation and carbon production reactor development activities are detailed in this report, as well as the results of integrated runs of the CTC process. Evaluation of the process and the carbon product produced is also included. It was concluded that carbon could be produced from mild gasification char utilizing the CTC process. Char methanation and membrane separation steps performed reasonably well and can scaled up with confidence. However, the novel directly heated reactor system for methane cracking did not work satisfactorily due to materials of construction and heat transfer problems, which adversely affected the quantity and quality of the carbon product. Alternative reactor designs are recommended